Nathan Bransford - The Forums

To give a lame example (and simple one): "No," he said angrily. vs "No," he said, his fist shaking. The second is more descriptive- I can see a man shaking his fist, but an angry man, well, there are a hundred ways a man can be angry. And I know that if his fist is shaking he is ...

I started writing some comments, but I pretty much agreed with jordynface and was said the exact same thing.

Writing Excuses did a discussion on writing with a collaborator a few weeks ago. You might want to give that a listen.

abc- that might be why so many people hate it- we don't want a love like that. We don't want to be consumed. We want to retain ourselves, our hopes and dreams and sense of purpose when we fall in love. I have been in love (married to my love) and I have never wanted to have that kind of relationship...

I am a chick and I hated twilight. As a woman, as a writer, as a feminist, as a fantasy lover, as a person with a brain- on all those levels I despised the book. I tried to see beyond the awful and see what my friends loved, but I am incapable. I did occasionally see sparks of potential, but that ju...

Much improved from prior drafts- my suggestions are all pretty minor. Hope they help. LATEST QUERY DRAFT _________________ Most girls dream of becoming a princess, but seventeen-year-old Nadine is not most girls. When King Joseph announces at the annual Embers Ball that she has been chosen to marry ...

shadow, in the writing forums I frequent, I have seen a lot of negativity towards starting in a battle. At this point, all we know about a character is his name, so there is no emotional investment. Live, die, whatever- I don't know this guy and for all I know, he's on the wrong side. And in a battl...

Not really sure about any of your other questions, but one thought I had- in the past ten year's, the public's view on homosexuality had changed and the marketability of such a work has probably improved as well. I am not an expert in any way though- just something to look into.

I can think of one big name writer whose personal views on issues has ruined his books for me. For example, you read this guy talking about how IDers make a lot of good points and then in his scifi he makes some ridiculous statement that shows he has no knowledge of how genetics works, it makes me t...

It depends on how the story is set up and how smoothly it is done. If it is well established to be 3rd omni and done well, that is not a problem (tolkien is an example of this). But if you have 3rd limited with a different POV character every paragraph, that becomes disorientating. How to tell the d...

Username- if the first five make the agent want to keep reading, they'll ask for more. Really, all that is being decided in the first five is do I want more. I have read that for most contests, the first round most judges read maybe one page before rejecting. As soon as they decide it isn't going to...

Supposedly Orson Scott Card says every writer once in their career can have a chapter with just one word. Haven't used my one time up yet. :)

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Here's the link- I was being lazy earlier. :)
I am on critters. I haven't gotten anything critted yet, but it is an easy enough set up for doing crits.

cmrprindle- you might want to find an online crit group for your genre. Generally, the rule is you do X many crits, you get your work critted. There was a thread with online groups listed at some point. But yeah, 30k words is way too short.

Author Author talks about this issue a lot. One of her points was that an author views their work as self expression, something personal and artistic. Everyone else in the business views it as a business. With these two very different perspectives, it makes sense that there are misunderstandings bet...